This posting showcases the fantastic Esri Story Map initiative and the availability of hundreds of story maps that may be of use to the teaching of any aspect of the geography curriculum. The story maps produced are not only spatially interesting but also full of valuable information. You may even like to get your students make their own story map - details of how to do it are on the Esri Story Map page.

Story maps use geography as a means of organizing
and presenting information. They tell the story of a place, event,
issue, trend, or pattern in a geographic context. They combine
interactive maps with other rich content—text, photos, video, and
audio—within user experiences that are basic and intuitive.
For the most part, story maps are designed for general, non-technical
audiences. However such maps can also summarise
issues for business and decision makers. In general story maps use the tool of GIS to present the results of
spatial analysis that does not require their users to have any special
knowledge or skills in GIS.Story maps use interactive web maps created with ArcGIS Online,
Esri's cloud-based mapping and GIS system. ArcGIS web maps let you
combine your own data, including spreadsheets and GIS data, with
authoritative content and thematic maps from Esri and the GIS community,
on top of Esri basemaps. The web maps support visualization,
queries, analytics, and pop-ups for map features with rich content
including photos and graphs.

People who are creating story maps to tell their geographic stories
include GIS professionals, planners, communications specialists,
knowledge workers, journalists, activists, web designers, bloggers,
educators, students, amateur geographers and hopefully school students!The Story Map Gallery is an excellent resource for students to explore and see the power of maps to tell a geographical and/or historical story. Some fascinating and informative maps!

The Vision of Humanity site
also provides maps showing a Global Peace Index, as well as peace
information specifically for the United States, Mexico and the United
Kingdom. Click here to watch a brief video on the Peace Index Project.

Vision of Humanity is a strong proponent of the need to further
study, advocate and act on peace. The website
focusses on the major issues facing the 21st century and aims to bring a balanced approach with factual information that
is positive and solution based.

As
seen above, the site provides a huge amount of information on
countries, in terms of peace indicators such as violent crime,
homicide, military expenditure etc. Just click on the "Specify
Indicator" button. The site also enables you to see the change in peace
status between 2009-2014 by using the date slider below the map. It is
worth spending some time navigating around this amazingly rich site to
see what it offers your political/social geography studies.

"Of the 17,958 people who died in terrorist attacks in 2013, 82 percent
were in one of five countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria,
and Syria. That's one finding from this year's Global Terrorism Index report, published by the Institute for Economics and Peace. The report is based on data from the University of Maryland's Global Terrorism Database, which has information on more than 125,000 terrorist attacks between 1970 and 2013.
The report found a 61-percent jump in terrorism fatalities between
2012 and 2013. "Over the same period," the authors wrote, "the number of
countries that experienced more than 50 [terrorism-related] deaths rose
from 15 to 24"—an indication that the problem of terrorism was getting
both more fatal and more widespread a year before ISIS declared a new caliphate. But it's also striking where terrorism didn't occur. Much of the
increase in terrorism-related fatalities in 2013 took place in Iraq,
where terrorists claimed nearly 4,000 lives—a 168-percent increase over
2012. Worldwide, Iraq was the worst-affected country, accounting for 34
percent of terrorism-related fatalities in 2013, with Afghanistan ranked
next with 17.3 percent. Meanwhile, between 2000 and 2013, the report
found, around 5 percent of terrorism-related fatalities occurred in the
34 wealthy countries of the OECD. In 2013 specifically, there were 113
terrorism-related deaths in OECD countries—0.6 percent of the worldwide
total. Six of these took place in the United States."

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Who am I?

I have taught history, geography and civics and citizenship in the South Australian education system since 1976. I have been actively involved in the promotion of geography and history over the years, in particular the use of spatial technology in schools. I am a Past Chair of the Australian Geography Teachers' Association (Chair 2008-13) and Immediate Past President of the Australian Alliance of Associations in Education (2013-present). During the development of the Australian Curriculum: Geography I was a member of the ACARA Advisory Panel (2009-2013) and Executive Director of the ESA GeogSpace project. From 2007-2011 and in 2015 I was the Manager for the Humanities and Social Sciences (HaSS) in the South Australian Department for Education and Child Development (DECD). Presently I am a Teaching Academic in HaSS Education at the University of South Australia and the Manager for the Premier's ANZAC Spirit School Prize in DECD.